The Social Safety Mesh of America

December 9, 2009

A lot of people think that when money is abundant there is less to worry about so religion should become marginalized. That is true to an extent but like the song goes “Mo money, mo problems”. Americans worry about everything. Our society is unlike any other in the world and I don’t mean that in a good way. In fact money itself is really the religion of America, the acquisition of it. Once Americans have money they worry more about getting more and holding on to what they have. It is a sickness to be sure but not one without its causes.

Recent “happiness” studies have shown that Denmark is the happiest place to live on the planet according to some defined set of criteria. Denmark is basically a socialist country. They have a lot of social safety nets. People know they will have food to eat, a place to stay and at least enough money to live modestly. What do we have in the US? A welfare system run amok that is bound to go bankrupt. A food stamp system that is regularly defrauded by people that don’t need them. An insolvent Social Security System. No universal health care. Millions of people who have run out of unemployment insurance and whose CORBA benefits extensions have also ended. So even when we make an effort to provide a safety net in America it really is little more than safety mesh. The people soon leak through to the bottom where they ration prescriptions to themselves, live in cars, become homeless, starve and yes, even die.

Americans have no real social safety net. Why? Because the elite spend billions of dollars dividing us using the corporate duopoly to force the masses of idiots to take one of two sides. Republicans believe liberals want to take all of their money and give it to poor blacks and Latinos. Democrats at least parrot the idea that we should have a better social safety net but then do little to nothing about it except blame Republicans even when they are in the majority (thanks only to the conservative Bluedogs). Both sides give lip service to Americans and then stuff their pockets with lobbyist checks and corporate kickbacks. It is a sham and a scam that continues today despite all of the recent revelations around the culture of corruption. Americans are suffering from abuse syndrome. They beat us up and we come back in four years and beg for another.

How does this all tie into religion? Well I know for a fact that many poor people are religious. They are religious for mainly two reasons: 1) Because they hope God will somehow make them rich or at least less poor one day and 2) They will hope their suffering in this life will increase their reward in the next. Neither will happen because God, assuming one exists, doesn’t care what happens to our miserable, arrogant species and there is not one shred of evidence outside of faith, which is no evidence at all, that an afterlife actually exists. Even if it did why there be a God waiting to judge you for your good and bad deeds and then pronounce eternal judgment upon you? What could you have possible done in the span of seventy or eighty years that was so bad that is warranted eternal damnation? I can’t think of anything honestly.

What about the middle and upper classes though? Yes these groups are less devoutly religious and are definitely religious in a different way. They’re the ones that sit quietly in their pews on Sunday nodding at what the minister says instead of jumping up and down, having spastic seizures and speaking in tongues (which is nothing but gibberish even to God). The way I see it is that people with a relatively stable income use religion in a preventative manner to ask God to keep them from becoming poor. Americans are terrified of becoming poor once they have ascended into the middle class and beyond. Nothing is worse for them than being embarrassed at seeing people they know down at the homeless shelter. Consumerism continues to drive many of us into poverty. Manufactured needs via advertising brainwash into thinking we need a Snuggle and a tv in the SUV. Then when medical problems happen or some other financial dilemma there we are bankrupt with nothing more than a a few months of social safety mesh.

The poor practice religion in reaction to their indigence. Their religion is a plea to God to end their suffering now on Earth, not in the afterlife. This is the stuff of prosperity religion. Forget that Jesus was poor. Jesus wants you to be rich. Forget that it is harder to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich to get into heaven. Just help me win the lottery God. Americans are tools of the elite. We always have been. Now it is becoming a stark reality for many of us as we realize that we have no recourse to redress our grievances. The government hates us. If we revolt they would crush us with super-advanced, high tech, space age military weapons that they actually show us on tv. The elite can do whatever they want to us because we refuse to unite. We are only useful as consumers to keep the system churning along long enough to kill us so that someone can replace us. America is profits before people. We are no longer even human in this country, not the rich nor the poor. The abstractions generated by the white racism that gave birth to this country have completely enveloped it. Everything is an object to be exploited so that more objects can be created. We are alone. No one is coming to save us. Not Jesus. Not Superman. Not Obama. No one.

So why are Americans still religious even though many of us have a roof over our heads, a decent wage, a car, a big screen tv, etc? It’s because objects can never replace spirituality and spirituality has nothing to do with religion. Religion is a substitute for it and a very poor one at that. We all want more and worry about losing what we have. We know that without a job there is a chance we could starve and die. Our success and what others think of us are intimately tied to our incomes and our ability to take care of ourselves and our families. We are embarrassed to admit we need help when crisis strikes us. We Americans are individualists. We don’t need no stinking government assistance!!! That’s for degenerates and losers right? Keep thinking that. I wonder what they’re doing in Denmark right now? I’ll bet they’re not making Christmas lists.